Wednesday, January 23, 2008

This is an idea straight from Victorian times when girls used to sit around all day and wonder who their suitors would be. Charm strings (or Memory Strings) are long laces with collections of buttons strung on them for safe-keeping and display.

The tradition says that a girl and her friends would collect buttons and string them on a piece of rope or twine (never anything as fancy as ribbon) and the goal was to collect 999 buttons before your friends did. But not 1000 because collecting 1000 buttons was to be cursed with spinsterhood. Instead, the legend said that when you collected 999 buttons it would be your turn to get married and your Prince Charming would present you with the last button for your collection. Quaint, no?

It seems like a fun tradition, regardless of it's political incorrectness, and I can see little girls (or even boys) enjoying collecting buttons for their own strings. Here are a few of the "rules":

1. Buttons should be one of a kind. Each of the 999 should be unique if possible.

2. The more beautiful, sparkling and brilliant the better.

3. Buttons should not be bought. Instead they should be presents from family and suitors or traded with another collector. That's why they're often called Memory Strings, because back when buttons weren't as common each piece of the collection represented a memory. "This one is from the dress I wore to Julia's cotillion, this one from Grandfather's uniform" etc.

4. Buttons with shanks are preferred as they nest together and form colorful necklaces that and be worn or displayed.

So look through your boxes and see what buttons you have. For small children stringing buttons promotes good small motor skills and sorting buttons into piles is good for analytic thinking.

This is fascinating. I throw buttons away immediately as I know perfectly well that I will never sew it back on and I have a 'thing' about getting rid of stuff (and by thing I mean compulsion :) )but I kinda wish I had some now.

What a great idea! I had a button collection when I was a kid. My dad had a friend with an old cabin in the mountains and their dump was there at the cabin. There was a huge pile of leftover clothes (50 years or more old) I would collect the neat buttons. But somewhere during a move, that collection was lost. Bummer.

Loved the deck stair sliding photos! We live on a hill, but so do a lot of trees. Our sled riding adventures have led to one broken leg and one broken finger.